Ira Yeager’s ‘Indian summer’ opens his Calistoga...

Gail Glasser and her pal, artist Ira Yeager, at the opening of his Calistoga gallery July 8, 2018.

Photo: Catherine Bigelow / Special to The Chronicle

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A creative crest adorns the new Calistoga gallery featuring the works of painter Ira Yeager on July 8, 2018.

Photo: Catherine Bigelow / Special to The Chronicle

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A new Ira Yeager exhibition, “Indian Summer: Portraits of Nobility,” opens in September at the artist's new Calistoga gallery on July 8, 2018.

Photo: Catherine Bigelow / Special to The Chronicle

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Ira Yeager’s gallery mixes his paintings with his many collections of furniture, artifacts and antiques.

Photo: Catherine Bigelow / Special to The Chronicle

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For 40 years, artist Ira Yeager has painted a series of Native American portraits featured at his new Calistoga gallery.

Photo: Catherine Bigelow / Special to The Chronicle

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Abstract expressionist landscapes such as this Napa vineyard are also featured at Ira Yeager's new Calistoga gallery.

Photo: Catherine Bigelow / Special to The Chronicle

After a lifetime of painting, Ira Yeager, 79, finally opened his first contemporary gallery this summer in downtown Calistoga. And in early September, a new exhibition, “Indian Summer: Portraits of Nobility,” opens, featuring Yeager’s famous series of American Indian portraits — a subject he’s painted gloriously for 40 years.

But don’t look for a gallery with Yeager’s exact spelling: Longtime studio director Brian Fuller, the mastermind behind this endeavor, created a family crest for the old-fashioned sign emblazoned: Yager Galerie — the traditional spelling of the artist’s last name.

“‘Yager’ in German means ‘hunter,’ so our logo has a fish, deer antlers, a vine and an apple with paintbrushes in homage to Ira’s history. It’s fantasy branding,” admits Fuller, with a laugh. “The valley usually celebrates Italian and French heritage, so we’re enhancing the German.”

Although Yeager still maintains his San Francisco studio, in the 1980s he moved up north, where he owns numerous properties dotting the valley. And the cream of the Napa crop turned out July 8 to cheer on their delightfully bohemian neighbor — including Elizabeth Swanson and her daughter, Alexis Traina; Charles Crocker; Elly and Francis Coppola; Dede Wilsey; Patti and Tommy Skouras; Gail Glasser; Kaylea and Peter Bakker; and Molly Chappellet.

Yeager, a California College of the Arts and S.F. Art Institute grad, studied abstract expressionism and Bay Area figuration with some of the greats: Elmer Bischoff, Nathan Oliveira and Richard Diebenkorn. He still treasures his friendship from that era with artist Joan Brown.

“We’ve been pushing our own path all these years,” Fuller says. “But now we finally have a great space to exhibit Ira’s works the way they should be represented. We mix the art with objets from Ira’s personal collections he’s amassed since he was 15. The interior vision is akin to Ralph Lauren collides with Louis XIV.”

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Much of Yeager’s artistic palette is inspired, he says, by that inveterate collecting: the faded colors of a brocade jacket, a green olive oil jug; the rough-hewn wood of a vintage wine cart.

“I like to joke that history ended in 1820, so I often sign paintings with that date. Because I feel like I’ve lived so many incarnations in one life, I invent history in my painting,” Yeager says. “I’m lucky to experiment through time, moving from my French peasant series to abstract Dutch florals, 18th century women in ball gowns with greyhound dogs or that era’s shoes. And, of course, the Indians.”

Born in Bellingham, Wash., Yeager’s father, Ira Yeager Sr., was a noted sportsman and Pacific Northwest fishing guide alongside the likes of Eddie Bauer. In 1967 while living in Santa Fe, N.M.,Yeager began painting the noble spirit and dramatic visages of American Indian traders he knew in his youth.

“Daddy used to trade duck decoys with the Lummi Indians in exchange for their baskets, beaded jackets or bone dance artifacts like decorated bows and drums,” recalls Yeager.

Yeager also paints landscape series of the many locales in which he’s lived: Corfu, Greece; Tangier, Morocco; and the sun-dappled Napa vineyards.

Yet one series Yeager has yet to execute is his Big Pig idea of well-dressed women holding pigs on their laps.

“Brian (Fuller) warned me to quit doing that — no one will ever buy the subject,” says Yeager somewhat woefully, like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Then in February, what do I see on the cover of W Magazine? A seated woman in a beautiful gown … holding a pig!”

Home run: Aside from the S.F. Giants’ home-run crown prince Barry Bonds (the rank of “king” still belongs to Willie Mays), who was to be honored Aug 10 and 11 at AT&T Park, there’s another team super slugger receiving well-deserved accolades: Giants Enterprises Senior Vice President Stephen Revetria.

On Friday, Aug. 10, Revetria receives the 2018 Peter Goldman Award of Excellence from the San Francisco Hotel Council at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, where he will be toasted by an all-star roster, including Giants CEO Larry Baer, Mayor London Breed, Protocol Chief Charlotte Shultz, San Francisco Travel CEO Joe D’Alessandro and Hotel Council Executive Director Kevin Carroll.

Elizabeth Orsi Revetria and her husband, Giants Enterprises Senior VP Stephen Revetria, who receives the SF Hotel Council Peter Goldman Award for Excellence in August 2018.

Photo: Catherine Bigelow / Special to The Chronicle

Revetria is recognized as a champion of San Francisco’s tourism and hotel industry — taxes from which are the lifeblood of the city’s general fund.

A Bay Area native and University of San Francisco alum-turned-trustee, the Giants exec tasked with raising such non-ballpark revenue as presenting awesome concerts, dreaming up the Gotham Club, hosting swell ballpark suite soirees, developing the Giants Enterprises’ maritime yacht program and organizing this summer’s superb Rugby World Cup Sevens tournament at AT&T Park — the sport’s first-ever global scrum in the United States.

And heck, thanks to his team representation at the inaugural Sport at the Service of Humanity conference in Rome, Revetria even met Pope Francis. Twice.

“It is quite an honor for Stephen to be receiving the Hotel Council’s prestigious Peter Goldman Award,” wrote Larry Baer, via email. “The fact that he is only the fourth nonhotelier in the 30 years of the award speaks to how he has grown Giants Enterprises and to his commitment to the tourism and hospitality community.”

Catherine Bigelow is a freelance reporter-columnist-blogger who specializes in coverage about boldfaced names and A-List affairs. A fourth-generation Northern Californian, Miss Bigelow first divined her love of San Francisco by reading the dispatches of such classic Chronicle columnists as Pat Steger, Stanton Delaplane, Charles McCabe and Herb Caen. She began her newspaper career at The San Francisco Chronicle in 1995 as an editorial assistant to the features department's editor and columnists. She became a features reporter in 1999 and was assigned the society column in 2004.

Catherine left The Chronicle in 2007 but continues to write features for the paper and a twice-weekly society column.